‘I’m here,’ he heard her whisper. ‘Soon …’
He woke in the queen’s bed, disentangled from her in his restless sleep. Unsure where he was, but peaceful, he watched the dawn through the open door. The edges of a few drifting clouds were burnt pale gold by the still unseen sun. The colour stabbed strangely at his heart. He lifted himself on to one elbow, a poem of languid male beauty in the early light, and took stock of his surroundings. The queen’s face was hard in sleep, her body brazenly exposed. He felt a flicker of disgust towards her, then woke a little more, and realised he had to have her immediately. She rose from sleep with him already plunging in and out of her.
The queen was growing uneasy about her lover. True, his lust was unabated. If anything, it seemed to be growing stronger and fiercer – she could barely tear him away from her. He ravished her at every opportunity and long into the night. In sleep, however, he cringed from her touch and muttered in his dreams. Her supply of hair was growing low, too. She’d flown, crow-formed, into the valley several times, but the wretched girl was still in that ridiculous practice of mourning, and her scalp was bare. Angry and anxious, the queen arranged to bring the wedding day closer. Once he’d vowed himself to her, the spell would be sealed, and she needn’t depend on the little bitch’s tresses.
The Black Knight, too, was troubled. The queen’s brew addled his every waking moment until he couldn’t think of past or future, and his only present desire was to use her fiercely. Still, there was a discordant note, always strongest in the early mornings before he fully woke. When he fucked her, he worshipped her beauty and desired nothing else, but part of him seemed to be punishing her too. Whenever he tried to think about it, his mind fogged over, and all he knew was that he adored her and couldn’t wait to bury himself in her once more. His nights were disturbed. Several times, he woke up walking around the castle, on the ramparts and once even out in the grounds. Some dream had led him out – some vision of a pretty running girl. He’d stand bewildered in the darkness, thinking his surroundings were a terrible place and he must leave immediately. Then, fully awake, he’d remember the queen and hurry back to bed. But all the time another dreamy desire was just out of reach, and he thrust harder, his cock straining towards that intangible ideal.
In the quiet valley, Lily grew thin and dreamy. Each night, she and her mother mixed their own collection of herbs with the morning’s scraping of light fuzz from Lily’s scalp and a snippet of the Black Knight’s locks. Being practical women, they arranged pillows, blankets and cushions to support her comfortably, and then the mother would retreat to her room and carefully seal the chinks in the door with twists of old rags. It would not do for them both to be carried through the spirit-world thus. Lily would light the brazier, and let the smoke surround her, carrying her into a trance. One night, the mother heard Lily scream out, and sat bolt upright in bed with all her mother-bear instincts ablaze. If her child were in danger … But then the scream came again, from high and shrill all the way down the scale to a breathless shuddering gasp that drew out, quavering. The mother lay down again, pulling the blankets back into place. Lily had found her true love, and found her way through the mist of the sorceress’s spell into his heart’s desire. All night, Lily gasped and moaned in her trance. When the dawn came, her mother took away the rags and opened the door. Her daughter was sprawled in front of the fire, her nightgown torn and a smile on her face as true sleep at last replaced the spirit-travel. So it went on, night after night, the mother sleeping with pillows over her head, the daughter sending her spirit in search of her true love.
By the time the queen’s wedding plans reached their valley, Lily was grown so weak from her efforts that she could scarcely stand. The mother was worried – Lily was reaching her knight, true, but only in their dreamtime. She was keeping their love alive, but that only made the sorceress’s hairy concoction more powerful.
‘The memory alone can’t break the spell,’ said her mother, ‘just as memory alone can’t keep love alive forever. It must taste the sweetness of reality from time to time. He travelled far and often, for that, and now it’s your turn.’
And so they borrowed a neighbour’s horse, plodding but reliable, and left the village with the mother leading the horse and Lily barely able to keep upright on its back.
At each village, her mother enquired after the news. With the Black Knight’s fame spread so wide, the gossip about him was equally enthusiastic. He had turned into a crow, said some, or the sorceress gave birth daily to fully grown knights, all with his strength and skill! As they approached the border, the rumours were less wild and more convincing. The wedding day had been brought forward. His passion had redoubled. The queen was now in the habit of discharging her sovereign duties, meeting emissaries, dismissing petitioners, and so on, while copulating with the knight. Sometimes he curled at her feet, while she sat at her writing table in the state room, his head making a bulge under her skirt while he drank between her widespread thighs. Just as often, her skirts were rucked up, exposing her to all the court, while his fingers made fast work inside her. She had been known to sign documents while bent over the table, her bottom bared, and his shaft shoving fiercely into her. However true or exaggerated, most reports agreed that the wedding was now fixed for winter’s eve, the night that heralded two long moons of darkness. It was an evil and powerful time.
The harvest was taken in; the days were shortening fast. The earth’s bounty had almost ended for the year – it still offered fat orange squash and late-ripening apples, but little else. The berries that hadn’t been picked were shrivelled and vile, festooned with cobwebs. Over the black stubbled earth of empty fields, autumn mists crept thick and eerie. The bare branches of trees loomed out of the white weirdness and the road was hard to follow. In the queen’s lands, the dying year’s untidiness mingled with the pervading neglect and bleak weather to create a vista of desolation. The Black Knight saw it, and it brought misery into his heart. Bitterly, he sought his solace in the arid lands of her body, and found only brief satisfaction. However much he wanted her, he always came wanting more, as if it were not her at all he wanted. When winter truly dawned, so would his marriage. Perhaps, he wondered, that would fulfil the longing in his heart. And on the eve of his marriage, he dreamt of midwinter.
Snow was whirling around a little cottage, humble and snug. The chinks of wood were well sealed with pitch, and a fire blazed – a mixture of bright embers which had burnt long and low, and fresh flaming logs. He felt at peace, sitting cross-legged by the fireplace on a pile of rugs – but not so calm, because opposite him was the most bewitching girl he had ever seen. Their eyes met in shy heated glances as his hesitant hands unlaced her gown and opened it wide. The shape of her breasts was clear through her shift, making him swell painfully in his trousers. He swallowed hard, as his clumsy, nervous fingers slid her shift down. She was bare to the waist now, like him. He wanted to grab her close, feel her nipples against his chest and all that soft flesh compressed against him. Still, he was determined to be patient.
He always planned his first time back with her so carefully. He had enough time to think about it – night after night, hearing others’ grunts and gasps, alone in his tent and yearning. But, once he was with her, it was always different. The Lily he returned to was so much more vivid and full-blooded than the pale shadow of memory that accompanied him. Her flame-lit eyes invited; she invented games to delight him. No doubt she, too, plotted each meeting with ardour, and so what played out was half of each, to the excited surprise of both.
Now she leapt up, her dress still wantonly around her waist. ‘Come with me …’ She giggled, moving to the door.
‘But it’s snowing!’ he objected, and then followed anyway, thinking he could lick the snowflakes from her hard nipples and that she could lead him anywhere, undressed like that, and he would follow, cock first. Or maybe heart first, because, though his cock protruded alarmingly, his heart shot after her like an arrow. Into the blizzard they ran, her laughte
r guiding him.
In the dark castle, the Black Knight rose from the queen’s bed, his eyes open but unseeing. He strode naked and hard down the cold stone corridors, following his dream-girl into the first night of winter.
Through whirling snow and over icy paths she led him, to a heavy door inset into stone. His veins pounded, thinking she meant him to take her there against the hard wood, the furnace of their lust defying the winter rage – but she was wrestling with the iron latch, and heaved her full weight to open the door. He had no memory of any such building in the village, but he followed his golden girl inside.
The sorceress’s hall was festooned with ivy and sharpedged holly, ready for the dawn wedding that would seal the somnambulist’s fate. On the far side, almost invisible in the shadows, a woman beyond middle age staggered under her burden, and laid her entranced daughter on the steps. A bow was slung over the woman’s shoulder and a quiver of arrows lay on her back. She loosened the girl’s bodice, readjusted her skirts and withdrew into the shadows. She faded into the night.
Lily had crossed the interior hall, and sat on the low steps at the front. He walked slower, nervous now, until he was close enough to see her eyes. They shone with the same pure love they’d always held, since first he and she had found each other. Then he was reassured, and his aching redoubled with the wave of love.
‘Let me take you,’ he begged.
‘It’s not time yet,’ she whispered back. ‘But I want you, I want you … Touch me with your tongue …’
He knelt eagerly. Her thighs spread as his cheeks brushed them, and his tongue flicked on to her open petals. She shuddered and sank back, knowing his hands would always catch her. In thin wet lines, he traced her familiar shape – first the outer petals, and then the valley into which they led, then the slippery thinner inner petals, and at last the hard little stamen that made her scream out and beg for him. He was lost between her legs, drinking the salty sticky juice and pressing his tongue in for more, then nibbling again at that precious pebble. She cried with bliss, her legs pinning him to her, and when she finished shaking he kissed her more until the tremors started all over again. Eventually she stammered, ‘Now – now – it’s almost dawn – you need to be inside me, now!’
Outside, the sky grew pale, and the queen’s subjects gathered around the hall. Still sleepy in their wedding finery, they yawned and rubbed their faces, waiting for the sorceress. Inside the castle, guards were scurrying back and forth at her shrieked commands, hunting for the errant groom while the maidservants arranged the bride’s black gown.
Ecstatic, he pressed his tip against her and nudged it forwards. Always, after a long absence, she was tightly sealed and he had to strain to enter her. His fingers had done nothing to ease his passage, and as he wiggled deeper she screamed low and loud – but she screamed ‘yes’, and he knew to take her at her word. With each inch of penetration, she moaned blissfully, spurring him on. Her slippery well hugged him tightly, and he succumbed. A final heave, and their thighs met, his cock plunged deep inside; she held him entirely, both sobbing each other’s name.
The queen was proceeding to the hall, angry and anxious, but sure her lustful knight would follow where her body led. And if he savaged her at dawn as was his way, even before the ceremony and in public, so much the better – her fury made her hot. Then all the unquenchable lust of that perfect body would be hers forever.
As they bucked, he seemed to be waking from a dream, seeing dawn light instead of darkness – but, if it were a dream, it was a good one and was continuing, because Lily’s nipple still filled his mouth and his cock still filled her pussy, and the rising bliss still rose. He thought he knew where he was now: in a castle, not in the village at all – not even, he realised, as sleep fell away, in his own kingdom. But he was too consumed with lust-rage for his true love to care about any of that.
He heard the massive doors creaking and a babble of people, but it was too late for anything: she was already frozen in a parabola against him, completely still but for the secret muscles that drank and grabbed him greedily. His sap was rising inexorably, spilling over into her, and then jetting in burst after burst as if he had waited months for this. As they came, their eyes met, and he knew again she was his one true love, and he could never love or want another. So the dream met the reality, and no spell could withstand the cataclysm of that moment.
He was kissing her deeply when he heard a familiar scream of rage behind him. Leaping naked to his feet, he spun to see the sorceress in her bridal clothes, her face contorted with ugly wrath. The girl’s mother stepped forwards, and passed the Black Knight his bow and arrows. The queen had a few final moments to observe his perfection: his long hair stuck to his brow with sweat and sweeping below his shoulders, his strong slender legs akimbo, his tool still thick and glistening with love, his biceps swollen as he pulled the string taut, his eyes shining with truth. Then his arrow found its home with keener aim than the first, and she was dead.
The Black Knight and his Lady Lily were married shortly after, in the king’s castle, free at last to spend their every night together. In recognition of their brave deeds, they were given the sorceress’s lands as a duchy. They ruled wisely and well, and in time the forests, the farms and the people recovered from her cruel reign. And, judging by the clouds of frightened birds in summer, and the plumes of steam in winter, they lived happily ever after.
An Earthquake in Leamington Spa Kristina Lloyd
I am having an affair.
There, I’ve said it.
Even the words make me feel giddy and alive.
I am having an affair!
Oh, God, how he touches me: his big hand in the small of my back, his big arms carrying me to bed, his big cock moving inside me. Everything about Harry is big, even his heart. Especially his heart.
‘Well, well,’ he said when I arrived in his attic room. ‘Mrs Townsend.’ He was sitting by his little cast-iron bed, knee raised as he polished a shoe, braces dangling, shirtsleeves to his elbows. A small coal fire glimmered in the grate, throwing an orange pool on the varnished floorboards, and shadows blurred the angles of that misshapen room.
He pronounced my name as if it were two words: ‘Mrs Towns End.’ And he had a randy mischievous grin that turned me to jelly. I stood pressed against the door, drinking in the sight of him. Oh, he’s a handsome devil, no doubt about it. His dark hair feathers across his forehead and he always needs a shave. From the moment I saw him, I was a lost cause.
Considering what had happened, I wasn’t as alarmed as you might think. I heard about it later: 3.2 on the Richter scale and apparently not uncommon in these parts. Something to do with faultlines in the Midlands Microcraton, whatever that is. The floor vibrated, the velux windows chattered and there was a rumbling like thunder that went on and on. I imagined tanks rolling up the Parade of Royal Leamington Spa, stucco columns trembling in their wake, baltis quivering in their woks. And then I thought: no, no, the world is ending. And then I changed my mind, thinking, dear God, the chimney’s collapsing and I need to get out of here at once, because what use is a mother buried under rubble and plaster?
I turned, tugging the door open, and everything went calm.
Well, the attic stopped shaking, and all the junk we keep up there – the boxes, suitcases, extra duvets, toys they’ve grown out of and that sodding albatross of an exercise bike – vanished in a trice. For years I’ve been wishing that would happen, I thought.
So the room was calm, yes, but I certainly wasn’t.
I was wearing a summer dress and a terrible tatty cardigan (I’d just been putting the washing out), and my heart was going wild. I might have been sixteen years old again, pale and petite, half mad with sensation, and smelling of Impulse, Juicy Fruit and menthol cigarettes.
‘I’ll get you a drink, shall I?’ he said, standing.
The floor creaked, and I couldn’t help but stare at his backside as he poured from a decanter. Really, it’s not like me at all but
there he was, broad-shouldered under his shirt, his smart trousers concealing buttocks I fancied would be taut and high, the flesh indenting perfectly as he walked. Excuse my French, but I hadn’t seen an arse that good for a long time. What else could I do but stare?
It seems odd I wasn’t more confused but my concerns were practically demolished by his strapping and kindly presence.
Smiling, he came towards me, the glasses diminutive in his hands, and, as I took my drink, he leant in for a kiss. Shocked, I turned aside, and instead he printed his lips to my neck, his broad hand on my hipbone, bunching up the cotton of my dress by an inch or so. His silky hair slid against my jaw and, carefully, I filled my lungs with the scent of his head, inhaling the faint smell of his scalp’s natural oils. I may have even brushed my nose over his hair, its softness gliding past my nostrils. And, all the while, his lips were on my neck, his hand was on my hip, and everything I thought I knew about myself was as gone as my sanity.
Then he withdrew and returned to his chair, straddling it backwards, his wrists on its back, drink in hand. I stood there, too stunned to speak, fearing my knees were about to desert me. I hadn’t felt so aroused since … since I couldn’t remember when.
He raised his glass. ‘To your good health, Mrs Townsend.’
I drank. Believe me, I needed it. It was port, and the liquid seemed to seep into my lips, making them plump and sweet, full of ruby-red warmth and the first stirrings of surrender.
I struggled to speak, and, when I did, it all came out wrong. ‘What on earth’s going on?’ I said briskly.
And I was no longer teenaged and hormonal. I was Ruth Townsend, 42 years old, part-time legal secretary, part-time picker-up of damp towels and other people’s shoes.
‘You’ve slipped back,’ he said. ‘It’s 1909. I’m Harry Wilkins, butler, valet, footman and all round dogsbody.’ He tugged an imaginary forelock, adding, with an ironic twinkle, ‘Ma’am’.
I looked at him for too long before saying, ‘And I’m married.’ My tone, I’m ashamed to say, was no longer brisk. Rather, it sounded quite seductive.
Love on the Dark Side Page 4
